Israeli air strikes kill three in Gaza

Two Palestinian militants and a schoolboy die as cross-border fighting escalates

Israeli air strikes killed two Palestinian militants and a schoolboy in Gaza on Monday as Palestinian rocket squads barraged southern Israel in escalating fighting that has defied international truce efforts.

The fighting so far has killed 21 Gazans, including 18 militants, seriously wounded two Israelis, and disrupted the lives of 1 million Israelis living within the range of Gaza rockets.

The Israeli military said it carried out nine air attacks against rocket-launching sites and a weapons storage facility early on Monday.

Islamic Jihad said two of its militants were killed in two separate raids, one while he was riding a motorcycle. A 16-year-old boy wearing a school uniform was killed when a group of five civilians was struck in another attack, Gaza health official Adham Abu Salmia said.

Two-dozen Palestinians, including several children, were wounded in a separate pre-dawn strike Monday in Gaza City, Abu Salmia said. Chief Israeli military spokesman Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai told army radio that this raid had targeted munitions that were stored in a residential building.

The military said the air attacks came in response to continued rocket fire, and Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld reported that 16 rockets were fired into southern Israel early on Monday. One rocket damaged a preschool building on a communal farm shortly before children were scheduled to arrive, but no one was hurt, Rosenfeld said.

Schools in the area were closed for a second day to avoid casualties; a day earlier, a rocket struck the courtyard of one of the empty schools.

Israel says the newly introduced Iron Dome missile defence system intercepted dozens of the rockets since the clashes erupted, and military officials speculated this averted more casualties.

But although the violence shows no immediate signs of subsiding, both Hamas and Israel seem eager to avoid the kind of all-out war that erupted three years ago.

In keeping with its practice since that conflict, Hamas has stayed out of the current clashes, for fear of provoking a harsh Israeli retaliation. But it has not stopped other, smaller Gaza factions from attacking Israel, and Israel continues to hold it ultimately responsible for any violence emanating from Gaza.

In the past, similar flare-ups have died out by themselves or with informal ceasefires negotiated by third parties, often Egypt.

Egypt has been trying to mediate an end to the recent clashes, and Hamas has also appealed to other middle-east countries to join the truce attempts. But the efforts have failed, with militants and Egypt insisting that Israel first halt its air strikes.

“The Zionist state began this aggression. It has to stop its aggression first and then we will evaluate the situation and study the possibility of calm,” the deputy secretary-general of Islamic Jihad, Ziad Nakhleh, was quoted as saying on the movement’s website.

Mordechai, the military spokesman, said Israel would halt its raids if the rocket fire would cease, but added that the Israeli military would continue to take pre-emptive action to foil militant attack plans.

Israel said it launched Friday’s initial air strike to stop a militant group’s plan to infiltrate into Israel through Egypt’s Sinai peninsula. The group – Popular Resistance Committees – was blamed for a similar border raid in August that killed eight Israelis, but the PRC has never acknowledged involvement. On a visit to southern Israel on Sunday, Binyamin Netanyahu vowed the air strikes would continue as long as necessary. “We have a clear policy: we will hit anyone who plans to harm us, who prepares to harm us and who harms us,” the Israeli prime minister said.

Mordechai said on Monday that Israel was prepared for a ground offensive if necessary. He also said Israeli military chief Lt Gen Benny Gantz has postponed a trip this week to the US because of the fighting.

Support for War News Radio

From Swarthmore College

War News Radio fills the gaps in the media's coverage of the conflicts in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and more by providing balanced and in-depth reporting, historical perspective, and personal stories. Today WNR is heard around the country and the world by thousands online.&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp

Follow WNR on Twitter

Search WNR

Archives

Go mobile with War News Radio

&nbspSubscribe and listen to War News Radio on our new Android app, left, or just open warnewsradio.org with any mobile device and save it to your home screen, as seen at right.

Licensing

Except for embedded content, and where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Simply, you can use our content freely, but only in its original form, and if give us credit with a link, and share your content freely as well.